The time is the 1970s. Jonnie Dash is an orphan, survivor of Harlem's gritty streets, ex-factory worker, and, finally, a successful and recognized African-American artist. Now flight from a brush with madness has brought her to Haiti. Encamping in the Old Hotel outside Port au Prince, Jonnie is seduced by the overwhelming beauty of the place. She finds a bond between the fierce inner struggles of her own past and the ever active struggles of the once enslaved island nation.

Most of all, she seeks some trace of fire from an old dream, in the shimmering form of a man who had once been her lover and her mentor.

Jonnie, however, finds herself an outsider in several ironic and unexpected ways. She is the only black guest at her fashionable hotel. To the native Haitians, her independence, outspokenness, and natural hair-style earn her the sobriquet la blanche aux cheveux frisees, "the white woman with the kinky hair." Savaged by a personal crisis even more terrifying than the one she had escaped, the alienated and confused Jonnie plunges into tempestuous rounds of drinking and sex.

Ultimately, a child who desperately appeals to her for help - and who holds the key to the redemption of a loss once thought hopelessly irretrievable - helps take Jonnie beyond fear and past her demons to a wholeness of spirit that mere youth can never know.